How To Live Forever… As A Diamond

I recently stumbled onto LifeGem.com, a company that creates diamond memorials from your own carbon. With a lock of hair or the cremated remains, you can be made into a .20 carats to 1.25 carat diamond.
I’ve been fascinated with synthetic diamonds since companies have perfected the technology to create them. Back in 2003, Wired Magazine ran a story on how a company in Florida can make a gem-quality diamond for less than $100. How does it work?

Put pure carbon under enough heat and pressure – say, 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit and 50,000 atmospheres – and it will crystallize into the hardest material known. Those were the conditions that first forged diamonds deep in Earth’s mantle 3.3 billion years ago. Replicating that environment in a lab isn’t easy, but that hasn’t kept dreamers from trying.

If De Beers were a U.S.-based company, it would be in violation of antitrust laws for fixing the prices of diamonds.

But I digress. So, what caught my attention on the LifeGem site was that they are creating 3 diamonds from Beethoven’s hair to be auctioned off for charity. They’re also looking to attract other celebs to donate a lock and help out other worldwide charities.

I can see this catching on in the memorial market, though. The Victorians were well known for making jewelry out of a lock of hair from a deceased loved one. If you’re even in the Philadelphia area, check out the Museum of Mourning Arts, where they have all kinds of mementos on display. They’ve even published a fantastic book on Mourning Art and Jewelry.

So would Detroit have such a thing as a Victorian-era cemetery? I was headed there on business, so I wanted to find out. Detroit in the dead of winter didn’t sound all that enticing, so why not just visit the dead, you know? If San Antonio, Texas had a Victorian cemetery (which surprised me when […]